Terre des hommes Moldova is looking to find a researcher/team of researchers/university to conduct a baseline study

Terre des hommes Moldova is looking to find a researcher/team of researchers/university to conduct a Baseline study on gendered social norms, attitudes and behaviours, regarding violence against children.

ORGANIZATION BACKGROUND

Working in Moldova since 2004, Terre des hommes (Tdh) is dedicated to ensuring the fulfilment of all children’s fundamental rights and to contributing to the improvement of the Moldovan child protection system. By means of its projects, Tdh Moldova aims for sustainable prevention of and response to violence, neglect and exploitation against children at the community, district and national levels. Tdh Moldova is geographically operating in the entire country. Currently, Tdh’s work in Moldova is built along three complementary axes – Child Protection Systems, Children Affected by Migration and Access to Justice, and seeks to develop synergies between them as well as with other key thematic areas of Terre des hommes Foundation.

COUNTRY CONTEXT

Thousands of Moldovan children experience violence. UNICEF reports that 76 percent of Moldovan children aged 2-14 years old experience violent methods of discipline and almost every second adolescent knows a peer suffering from bullying in school. In its national Strategy for the protection of the child, the Government of Moldova recognized that childhood violence is not decreasing and that violence is primarily caused and perpetuated by harmful social norms, a culture of violence in the society and family, insufficient parenting competencies, economic stress. The fact that public authorities have recognized childhood violence as an important problem, which will require changing social norms regarding children’s rights, effective parenting, gender equality, inclusion and non-discrimination is a step in the right direction. The fact that, globally, these norms are shifting (for example norms that endorse psychical punishment of children are weakening) and the fact that, internationally, there are examples of effective violence prevention programs provide additional opportunities for working to prevent violence in Moldova. Corporal punishment of children continues to be accepted in Moldova, with only 8 percent of parents stating that they would report to the police when witnessing a parent beating their child. Gender stereotypes and other harmful norms that condone violence run deep in the Moldovan society. Gender stereotypes are shared by both men and women, and they start early in childhood.

PROJECT SUMMARY

The project, Preventing childhood violence through engagement – a community based model, will be implemented in partnership with 30 local communities from Moldova, which will be invited to participate as partners that engage and contribute their resources to the project implementation.

The main objectives of the project are:

Prevent violence among children in the school by transforming school cultures, empowering children, and equipping teachers.

Prevent child maltreatment in the family by improving capacity of parents and empowering children.

Contribute to reducing harmful social norms.

Participating schools from the selected communities will contribute with space for setting up Ludotecas and youth clubs «ALEG» and will ensure the remuneration of teachers for providing psycho-social activities through the Ludotecas. The project will further collaborate with public authorities (local and national) and with partner NGOs to inform them of lessons learned and good practices identified during the project. Assessments produced as part of this project will be made public to ensure that they contribute to building evidence based and context specific models for preventing childhood violence and reducing harmful social norms in Moldova. Social norms do change, but it takes time, context specific interventions, research, and efforts of many different stakeholders. Projects focused on changing social norms require knowledge of internationally researched strategies, on one hand, and specific knowledge of local realities on the other (e.g. identifying opinion leaders who may influence local norms, equipping them to become messengers of the new norms, and understanding when the tipping point happens). Building individual and institutional capacity for preventing violence comes with its own set of challenges. These include designing programs that are grounded in theory, finding experts, researching impact, finding agents of change and the right local specialists to conduct regular activities. An added complexity is that agents of change (youth and adults) need time to go through their own transformation processes before they can influence others. Because of these challenges and opportunities, in addition to implementation, this project is also designed to be a learning and research initiative.

BASELINE STUDY OBJECTIVES

Tdh Moldova is looking to find a researcher/team of researchers/university with a strong research background and reputation in social norms evaluation. The baseline study is planned to include an initial phase of preparing the research methodology and collecting baseline data; and a final evaluation phase to collect information on the project results. The study will involve a mixed-methods (qualitative and quantitative) approach to generate relevant and credible information.

EXPERT RESPONSIBILITIES

Design of the baseline methodology, ensuring that the methodology reflects ethical research guidance;

The methodology should allow:

to provide a benchmark in the monitoring and evaluation frameworks against which changes in gendered social norms, attitudes and behaviours;

to identify the most pervasive forms of violence against children;

to identify the existing and most prevalent social norms and gender ideologies (especially traditional masculinity) that perpetuate violence against children;

to identify positive norms that challenge or can challenge the negative social norms;

to identify barriers to transforming social norms which perpetuate violence;

To explore strategies for changing social norms and make specific recommendations for improving behavioural change;

To help develop key messages to address the most significant high-risk behaviours;

REQUIRED PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

The candidate(s) should have:

Relevant academic education, in addition to a minimum of 5 years of experience in the fields of research.

Strong understanding of gendered norms, cultural practices and attitudes and behaviours that relate to violence, especially violence against children.

Extensive experience in baseline study designs and implementation.

Strong skills in capacity development, particularly with respect to qualitative research

Extensive experience in using mixed-methods approach

Exemplary cross-cultural communication skills

Strong oral communication and excellent English report writing skills

TIMETABLE

The first phase will start in March and will last around two months. The second phase will be further agreed with the selected candidate(s).